With only eight players before the season began Parrott Academy’s girls basketball team couldn’t afford any injuries, yet the injury bug bit early and often.

Now, the Patriots are playing with only six players. And they’re still in the race.

Parrott Academy, which lost two of its starters due to serious injuries before the end of the first quarter of its first game, has battled a season in which at least four players have missed time due to being hurt or an illness.

And at times, all were out at the same moment.

“It was a pretty tough game that first game against a pretty good opponent,” said Patriots coach Tom Bailey, whose team only lost by five despite the misfortune.

“I’m sure most of (the girls) were out there going, ‘Oh no.’”

One of Bailey’s main concerns heading into the season was his lack of depth. With only eight on the roster, he hoped and prayed none of them would sustain a serious injury.

In the season opener at Fayetteville Academy on Nov. 14, the Patriots lost junior Kayla King for the season with a torn ACL and lost junior Teigh Beth Bailey for more than a month with a broken knee cap. They were also without sophomore Caroline Caryle, who was in Florida at the time.

That all happened in the first quarter. Then more bad luck came.

“I thought it was a joke,” said junior Brooke Uken, who suffered an asthma attack during the second quarter.

Added senior Logan Beyer: “The four of us just looked at each other and were like, terrified.”

But the bad luck didn’t end there.

Uken has missed time due to her asthma, senior Campbell Huddle is currently sidelined with a broken left wrist and eighth grader Erin Hughes has missed some time with a hamstring injury.

Yet, the Patriots, whose game today at Henderson Kerr-Vance Academy has been postponed until Wednesday due to the possibility of inclement weather, sit at 6-8 overall and are 4-4 in the league.

“We’ve had to make-shift some, though. We’ve had some out of position and playing different spots,” Bailey said.

“It hasn’t been just one thing. It’s been all kinds of things. We’ve got eight girls and five of them have had pretty major injuries.”

The bad luck has caused them to have to postpone one game — at home against Cary Christian on Jan. 11.

Bailey said he had only four players that night, so the two teams agreed to play the game at a later date, if needed to shake things out in the conference standings.

Page 2 of 2 - Parrott, which is currently fifth in the Eastern Plains Independent Conference, has won two of its last three games, and has done so with only one reserve. In several games this season the Patriots had a lineup of five players — one each from eighth grade to a high school senior, Bailey said — and still won.

Even with all the bad luck the team has endured, it has done nothing but make it a tighter-knit group.

“I think we got closer as a team because we only had each other,” Beyer said.

While the team obviously wants to earn more wins than losses, considering what it has been through to this point, the players will take where they’re currently at.

“We just work hard and try our best,” Teigh Beth Bailey said. “It’s kind of hard with five people.”

Added Uken: “It goes both ways. It’s frustrating not to win but at the same time I’m proud at us for what we’ve done.”

Ryan Herman can be reached at 252-559-1073 or Ryan.Herman@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter: @KFPSports.